thingoid

Inform 7 was released on 30 April 2006, ten years to the day since the last major upgrade of the Interactive Fiction authoring system. And it’s an exciting leap forward (more…)

Short reviews of social bookmark services

Maybe del.icio.us is a bit plain for your palate, maybe you want a bit of variety — there are several alternatives (more…)

Of course the web has never had an index and everyone knows that the only way to find interesting stuff on the ‘net is to search at a search engine.

But in practice there have always been other options. In the early days of the web, sites offering a “random link” were pretty common - a click on the link would land you anywhere on the known web, which was a pretty good way of finding interesting sites. But as both the web and its inhabitants mulitiplied so did the range of subjects hosted online and the untargetted random link lost its attraction - the chances of landing somewhere interesting to you was limited. (more…)

This book provides an excellent broad review of the history of information and communications technology, starting with the spoken and written word through to computers, computer networks, and the world-wide web.

Unfortunately, the title of this book gives the impression that there will be an examination of the current state of information architecture with some looking forward to the future of the “emerging profession”. Relatively little of the book is given to discussing IA as a profession, with much more weight going to the historical context. In fairness, the intention of the book is “to introduce the reader to key innovations in the history of communications systems and technologies leading to the information age”. While it is important to know where the profession is emerging from, it is just as important to look at where it is likely to emerge to. (more…)

Seth Godin’s “The Big Red Fez” is to Internet marketing what Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” is to web usability. They’re both thin books written in a glib style that allows the authors to cover a lot of ground without delving too deep. It would be easy to dismiss both as lightweight if the advice were not generally so sound. (more…)

I’m not sure who Molly Holzschlag and her contributors were targeting in her book “XML, HTML, XHTML Magic”. In the introduction it says that the reader will be “working on the web professionally or … interested in doing so”. If she means that the reader will be a professional web developer, then this book missed the mark. (more…)

Peopleware: Productive projects and teams is an essential manual for management of IT projects. In a light and entertaining style the authors outline what’s wrong and what’s right with modern software development projects. They also offer practical solutions and advice. (more…)